LAHORE – Pakistan’s former World Cup winning captain Imran Khan has said that the national team’s flawed batting order led to its fall in the semi-final against India in the recently-concluded Cricket World Cup.
“I kept on saying that you need to send your best batsmen at the top so that they can save wickets. When you preserve your wickets, the pressure transfers to the fielding side and if you have a couple of hard hitters in the team, you can always score quick runs in the final overs,” said Imran.
He was speaking at a reception hosted by P and T Gymkhana’s Azhar Zaidi in honour of ICC Elite Panel Umpire Aleem Dar. The umpire returned with 100 percent result in the World Cup where the referral system was introduced by the ICC and many decisions of other umpires were turned down. Many former cricketer and PCB officials were present on the occasion. PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt, Abdul Razzaq, Khalid Mahmood, Salahuddin Sallu, Abdul Qadir, Ramiz Raja and Ashiq Qureshi were some of the prominent personalities present on the occasion.
“We did that in the 1987 and 1992 World Cup knockout matches,” he added. Saying that the recent defeat to India in the World Cup semi-final in Mohali still hurts and was hard to accept, the cricketer-turned-politician said the Pakistani team crumbled under pressure.
“To tell you the truth even now the defeat hurts because our team crumbled under pressure,” Imran said.
Imran said that Dar has set a great example of how to perform under pressure. The former captain, who presented a gold crown to Dar, said that if the Pakistan team had also withstood the pressure of the semi-final as the umpire had done in the World Cup, it would have won the semi-final against India.
He said India’s success in the World Cup was mainly because of MS Dhoni who leads the team in all the three formats. Imran suggested that Pakistan should also have one captain for all three formats. “I would suggest that Shahid Afridi lead the team in all the three formats,” he said.
“What disappoints me is that this team performed very well and reached the semi–finals when no one expected it to go this far. But once they had got into the semi-final and knew it was going to be a high pressure match against India, the players should have been ready for the situation. Unfortunately they buckled under the pressure,” said Imran.
The 58-year-old, who was in India for the semi-final, noted that he was also disappointed because India were under greater pressure because of the home crowd and their title favorites tag. “When India batted, you could see they were under pressure and except for Virender Sehwag who batted without any care, all the other batsmen including Sachin Tendulkar were under pressure,” Imran said.
He also added that the pressure factor was so great that even a world class performer like Tendulkar had given at least four chances. “India were under pressure and appeared set for a defeat but when our turn came to bat our batsmen just didn’t absorb the pressure well. The batting collapsed badly.” Imran noted that once wickets started to fall the pressure became greater on the incoming batsmen and it was difficult for them to perform. “Pakistan also committed tactical mistakes in the match and we had a golden opportunity to win that game,” he added.
